Yearly Archives

Testimonies, Speeches and Comments

The NCPA has a highly effective office in Washington, D.C. that sponsors Capitol Hill briefings, conferences and testimony by NCPA experts before congressional committees. The NCPA serves as a source of "outside the Beltway" thinking for Capitol Hill deliberations.

For as long as I've been involved in this issue, I have noticed that people who believe in socialized medicine have invested in a great many myths, and they repeat these myths often to themselves and to others. They have a good number of myths that they believe in about the health care systems of other countries and about our own.

Raul Medrano: Good day to all of you and welcome to the National Press Club. I'm Raul Medrano, president and CEO of 4M-Medrano, Minority Marketing & Media, based here in Washington D.C., and I'm a member of the Newsmaker Committee.

Good afternoon. I am John Berthoud, President of the National Taxpayers' Union. I'm very pleased that you could all join us today. This is the second in a series of four sessions being hosted by NTU and Heritage and Citizens Against Government Waste.

As of January 1, 2004, 250 million nonelderly Americans now have access in principle to Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), provided they are combined with catastrophic insurance. The idea behind HSAs is quite simple. Individuals should be able to manage some of their own health care dollars through accounts they own and control. They should be able to use these funds to pay expenses not paid by third-party insurance, including the cost of out-of-network doctors and diagnostic tests. They should be able to profit from being wise consumers of medical care by having account balances grow tax free and eventually be available for nonmedical purchases.

Energy is and will remain an important factor in the U.S.'s economic growth. While for much the 20th Century, America has enjoyed excess energy capacity in the transportation and utility sectors, this is no longer the case.